Split This Rock’s 2019 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest, judged by Franny Choi, is open for submissions. Now in its 12th year, the annual poetry contest, renamed in 2017, serves to raise the visibility and prestige of poetry of provocation and witness. Winning poems are published on Split This Rock's website and in The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database. The 1st place recipient receives $500 and the 2nd and 3rd place recipients receive $250 each. All prize winners will receive free festival registration, and the 1st place recipient will be invited to read the winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2020. The deadline to submit is November 1, 2018. Entry fee is $20, supporting Split This Rock’s work to bring poetry to the center of public life.

In an era when political leaders are advancing oppressive measures that put civil rights, the environment, and lives at risk, Split This Rock invites poets to respond with the power of their words. This national contest seeks poems that reach beyond the self to connect with the larger community or world; poems of provocation and witness. The theme can be interpreted broadly and may include but is not limited to work addressing politics, economics, government, war, leadership, issues of identity (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic class, body image, immigration, heritage, etc.), community, civic engagement, education, activism, history, Americana, and cultural icons. For full details on how to submit, visit Submittable or Split This Rock’s website.

Franny Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and the forthcoming Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Helen Zell Writers Program. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow, an Editor of News and Politics at Hyphen Magazine, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Franny headlined as a Featured Poet for Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2014.

About Split This Rock: Founded in 2008, Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes personal and social change. It calls poets to the center of public life. Core programs are a biennial national poetry festival, city-wide youth programming, contests, readings, workshops, campaigns for social change, and an online database of social justice poems. The only one of its kind highlighting poetry at the intersection of the imagination and social change, Split This Rock Poetry Festival now attracts over 700 poets, activists, and dreamers to DC.

Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts released information confirming that poetry reading is on the rise. Specifically, according to the NEA’s Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar:

28 million U.S. adults read poetry not required for work or school, the highest rate on record over a 15-year period of conducting the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

Young adults are the fastest growing group of poetry readers among all age groups. Among 18-24-year-olds, the poetry-reading rate has doubled, to 17.5 percent in 2017, up from 8.7 percent in 2012.

African Americans, Asian Americans, and other non-white, non-Hispanic groups now read poetry at the highest rates.

These findings were released in a post on the NEA’s Art Works blog. The data is part of the latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a research partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Census Bureau.

As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary, Split This Rock is proud of our contribution to increasing the audience for poetry in our community. Each year, we engage with thousands of people through readings, open mics, workshops, poetry contests, youth slam festivals, school-based activities, campaigns to integrate poetry into movements for social change, and the award-winning DC Youth Slam Team.

Biennially, our cornerstone program, Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, now attracts approximately 700 poets, activists, and dreamers to our nation's capital. Over 23,000 people have visited our online social justice poetry database, The Quarry, since its creation in 2015. Through a deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, all Split This Rock programs aim to celebrate and present poets and poetry that represent the true diversity of our cultures and communities.

Additionally, Split This Rock is part of a national Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 20 organizations in 11 cities dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. For the past two years, members of the Poetry Coalition have conducted programming on shared themes of social importance including poetry and migration, and poetry and the body.

We are energized by this new data from the National Endowment for the Arts and the ways in which Split This Rock can, along with our fellow Poetry Coalition members, continue expanding poetry's influence and reach.

Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts released information confirming that poetry reading is on the rise. Specifically, according to the NEA’s Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar:

28 million U.S. adults read poetry not required for work or school, the highest rate on record over a 15-year period of conducting the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

Young adults are the fastest growing group of poetry readers among all age groups. Among 18-24-year-olds, the poetry-reading rate has doubled, to 17.5 percent in 2017, up from 8.7 percent in 2012.

African Americans, Asian Americans, and other non-white, non-Hispanic groups now read poetry at the highest rates.

These findings were released in a post on the NEA’s Art Works blog. The data is part of the latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a research partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Census Bureau.

As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary, Split This Rock is proud of our contribution to increasing the audience for poetry in our community. Each year, we engage with thousands of people through readings, open mics, workshops, poetry contests, youth slam festivals, school-based activities, campaigns to integrate poetry into movements for social change, and the award-winning DC Youth Slam Team. Biennially, our cornerstone program, Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, now attracts approximately 700 poets, activists, and dreamers to our nation's capital. Over 550,000 people have visited our online social justice poetry database, The Quarry, since it's creation in 2013. Through a deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, all Split This Rock programs aim to celebrate and present poets and poetry that represent the true diversity of our cultures and communities.

Additionally, Split This Rock is part of a national Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 20 organizations in 11 cities dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. For the past two years, members of the Poetry Coalition have conducted programming on shared themes of social importance including poetry and migration, and poetry and the body.

We are energized by this new data from the National Endowment for the Arts and the ways in which Split This Rock can, along with our fellow Poetry Coalition members, continue expanding poetry's influence and reach.

Split This Rock will present its sixth biennial national festival of poetry of provocation and witness on April 19-21, 2018 in Washington, DC, celebrating the organization’s 10th anniversary and marking co-founder Sarah Browning’s final festival as Executive Director.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness (April 19-21, 2018) offers three days of readings, workshops, panel and roundtable discussions, a book fair, open mics, youth programming, and activism. The event includes opportunities to speak out for justice, build connection and community, and celebrate the many ways poetry can act as an agent for social change. Split This Rock Poetry Festival is DC’s premiere poetry event and the only festival of its kind in the country, highlighting poets working at the intersection of the imagination and social change.

Festival sessions were chosen from proposals submitted in response to a call to the activist poetry community for conversations, workshops, and readings to help participants use poetry to engage in resistance efforts and combat despair, learn from one another across generations, celebrate cultures targeted by hate, and equip us all as creative and effective citizens and activists. Special areas of interest were sessions focused on disability, transgender issues, reproductive rights, xenophobia/immigration, health care issues, confronting white supremacy, poverty and economic inequality, and eco-justice.

Registration rates for the 3-day festival are on a sliding scale from $100 to $300. The student rate is $50. A one-day pass is $85. Scholarships, group rates, and volunteer opportunities are available to defray the cost of attendance.

The festival will take place at venues throughout the Farragut Square neighborhood, with free featured readings in the National Housing Center at 15th and M Streets, NW, and daytime sessions at the Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives and the American Association of University Women. Festival open mics will be held at Busboys and Poets (5th & K).

Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. The organization calls poets to the center of public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Its programs integrate poetry into public life and support the poets of all ages who write and perform this essential work.

Festival Major Partners include Busboys and Poets, the Institute for Policy Studies, and The Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival is also made possible in part by the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz, Compton, CrossCurrents, Reva & David Logan, Revada, and Rosenthal Family Foundations, the Cynipid Fund, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and many generous individuals. Festival cosponsors include the Beacon Hotel, the Jimenez-Porter Writers House at the University of Maryland, Poets & Writers, Sinister Wisdom, and the Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives.

This is a hard letter to write, so let's get right to it: I'll be stepping down as Executive Director of Split This Rock in June of 2018. That'll be 10 years. Ten years! I'm incredibly proud of what we've built and I'm ready for a shift in my own life. I am not entirely sure about my next steps, but I have a second collection of poems, Killing Summer, coming out from Sibling Rivalry this fall and I am thinking of studying poetry formally, for once. MFA, perhaps?

This "job" has been the great work of my life. In late 2006, when we began to kick around the idea of a national gathering of activist poets, I never could have imagined the impact Split This Rock would have - the dramatic changes in the literary culture we've helped to bring about - nor all the amazing poets, activists, dreamers who would come into my life. I am fortunate and enriched beyond measure.

Will you join with me to ensure that Split This Rock's next 10 years are just as powerful, meaningful, and righteous as the first 10?

When I survey the last nine years, I am in awe, I am very proud of all we've built together. At every Split This Rock event and in every publishing venture, I look around the room (or virtual room) and witness that we are building Dr. King's Beloved Community: poem by poem, poet by poet, lover by lover - people of all ages, of many races and ethnicities, all kinds of genders and sexualities, with disabilities and without, folks new to poetry and those who've known its sweet power their whole lives - all grooving on the word, all awake to what poetry makes visible: complexity, clarity, hope, fierce beauty, truth.

And at each of the first five festivals: Hundreds of poet-activists from all over the country (and from other countries, as well!) emboldened by being together, by reading and listening to each other's work - poems by elders in this struggle for dignity for all, poems by teenagers just finding the words to tell their truths, poems by neighbors and new friends from the other side of the world.

As we were planning the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival which marked the organization's founding in March 2008, the brave poet-wonder Melissa Tuckey called my personal hero Adrienne Rich on the telephone. And reached her! Adrienne's health wouldn't allow her to attend, but she sent us a check for $1,000 and a note of encouragement: May this gathering inspire and affirm the spirit of many, especially younger poets and teachers, who have felt betrayed by corporate government and media, by broken promises and opportunism. Thank you for your hard work and belief in the freeing power of language and action.

Someone approached me at that first festival and said, as we clung to one another in exhilaration and exhaustion, "I've waited my whole life for this."

For all these reasons and dozens more, it's vitally important to me that I leave the organization in great shape. So I am dedicating the next year to building Split This Rock's funding base.

Split This Rock grew quickly and we now manage a pretty remarkable array of programs both national and local to our Washington, DC, home: the biennial festival, readings, open mics, workshops, two national poetry contests, the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, a Poem of the Week series, youth slam festivals, after-school poetry clubs in 10 area high schools and poetry and social justice curriculum for teachers, a youth writers' guild, campaigns to integrate poetry into movements for social change and to make the literary world more representative and more just, and the award-winning DC Youth Slam Team. Whew!

To continue doing all this and to do it well, Split This Rock's budget must grow.

As often happens when the time is right for a new organization, Split This Rock's programs grew much more quickly than the resources to support them. Staff, board members, and volunteers are incredibly overextended, our computers are out of date, and, even as we're grateful to have a home within the Institute for Policy Studies headquarters, we're crammed into two tiny offices.

There's no polite way to say it - we need more money. This year's entire budget for all the programs I outlined above, and in DC, one of the country's most expensive cities, is about $340,000 - two tiny offices, three full-time staff, two part-timers, a handful of teaching artists. Only 8% of our funding comes from individual donors, about 230 people total. (The national average for organizations our size is 30%!)

I'm asking you to change that calculus. If you've never donated and you read the Poem of the Week, please consider giving online today. If you've given $25 in the past and the festival has been meaningful to you - as so many of you tell me it has been - please give $50 today. Or make a monthly gift - it's charged to your credit card directly!

Maybe you have greater means and would like to make a challenge gift, encouraging others to give. We love those! Drop me a note at browning@splitthisrock.org or call me at 202-787-5210 to talk it over. These don't have to be huge - a $500 challenge can bring in new donors and inspire others to give more.

Will you help me ensure Split This Rock's legacy will not just continue but grow until we overcome hate and build that Beloved Community everywhere?

The year ahead will be challenging, though exciting, too. We're planning the 2018 festival, the first under the new, unconscionable regime. We want it to be the most powerful, the most significant so far! We'll be celebrating Split This Rock's 10th anniversary. Send us ideas for marking this incredible anniversary and your favorite memories to incorporate into a history of Split This Rock's first decade!

We'll also be recruiting, hiring, and training a new Executive Director. I know Split This Rock will be galvanized by new leadership. Look for the job opening to be posted in the fall and steer great candidates our way. Maybe that's you!

Split This Rock Joins Calls for Local Community to “Start Your Activism @ Home” #DoMore24

600+ Nonprofits Will Come Together on June 8 to Raise Nearly $2 Million to Support D.C, Maryland and Virginia Residents

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Split This Rock will join over 600 nonprofits throughout the area on June 8 for a community-wide event #DoMore24 hosted by United Way of the National Capital Area (United Way NCA).
Do More 24’s “Start Your Activism @ Home”, the region’s largest online giving day, will take place during the 24-hour period occurring on June 8th from 12 midnight to 11:59PM and is expected to raise nearly $2 million. To mark the day, United Way NCA will be hosting a community-wide block party bringing together local groups and community organizations – from step teams to marching bands and pet adoptions – from around the region with an urgent appeal to support services for vulnerable populations.

Do More 24’s “Start Your Activism @ Home” block party will be held at the PEPCO Edison Gallery, 702 8th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 8th from 7:00 am until 3:00 pm. This event will feature Split This Rock Youth Poets from 10-11 am!

Help Split This Rock raise the platform for poets & poetry calling for justice & peace!
Give to Split This Rock TODAY with #DoMore24 http://thndr.me/t7ilJ3

About Split This Rock: Founded in 2008, Split This Rock calls poets to the center of public life and cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes personal and social change. Core programs are a biennial national poetry festival, city-wide youth programming, contests, readings, workshops, campaigns for social change, and an online index of social justice poems. More information: www.splitthisrock.org

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) and three award finalists to be recognized at a gala ceremony on Friday, April 21, 2017 at 6pm at the Arts Club of Washington.

Split This Rock, the DC-based national non-profit dedicated to poetry of provocation and witness, is pleased to announce Christopher Soto (aka Loma) as the 2017 recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism for his work advocating for undocumented writers and queer homeless youth, as well as his support for queer poets of color. Made possible through the generosity of the CrossCurrents Foundation, the award recognizes and honors a poet or poetry collective doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. Soto will receive $3,000 and his work will be shared throughout Split This Rock’s national network.

Judged this year by Holly Bass, Dawn Lundy Martin, and 2015 Freedom Plow Recipient Mark Nowak, three finalists were selected for the award as well: Francisco Aragón for supporting and promoting Latinx poetry and poets; Andrea Assaf for telling stories of the Arab-American experience and of US service members and Iraqis in the Iraq war; and JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard for building community among queer poets of color.

The 2017 Freedom Plow Award gala ceremony and reading, cosponsored by the Arts Club of Washington and Busboys and Poets, will be held in honor of Soto and the award finalists, on Friday, April 21, 6-9 pm, at the Arts Club of Washington, located at 2017 I Street, NW in Washington, DC. Tickets are $25 for general admission, $10 for students, and can be purchased at www.SplitThisRock.org. Light refreshments will be served and the event will include an ASL interpreter.

ABOUT THE 2017 RECIPIENT: Christopher Soto aka Loma (originally from Los Angeles) is a poet based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of Sad Girl Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016) and the editor of Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books, 2018). In 2016, Poets & Writers honored Soto with the “Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award.” He frequently writes book reviews for the Lambda Literary Foundation. His poems, reviews, interviews, and articles can be found at The Nation, The Guardian, The Advocate, Los Angeles Review of Books, American Poetry Review, Tin House, and more and his work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. He has been invited to speak at universities campuses across the country. He cofounded the Undocupoets Campaign and worked with Amazon Literary Partnerships to establish grants for undocumented writers. He received his MFA in poetry from NYU and is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript about police violence and mass incarceration.

Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social and personal change. It calls poets to the center of public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Its programs integrate poetry into public life and supports poets of all ages who write and perform this essential work. The Freedom Plow Award, like Split This Rock’s signature biennial poetry festival, is an essential, enduring part of its mission to promote the growing field of art and social activism on a national level.

The CrossCurrents Foundation promotes social, environmental, and economic justice, focusing where it believes private funding can make a strategic difference to public education campaigns about critical issues. Effective and socially relevant public art is part of its overall effort to increase civic participation.

The 2017 recipient and finalists will be recognized at an award ceremony on April 21, 2017.

Split This Rock, the DC-based national non-profit organization dedicated to poetry of provocation and witness, is pleased to announce that Francisco Aragón, Andrea Assaf, JP Howard (aka Juliet P. Howard), and Christopher Soto (aka Loma) are finalists for the Third Biennial Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism. Made possible through the generosity of the CrossCurrents Foundation, the Freedom Plow Award recognizes and honors a poet or poetry collective doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. The award recipient will receive $3,000 and extensive attention to their work.

An award ceremony and reading honoring the 2017 Freedom Plow recipient and finalists will be held on Friday, April 21, 6-9 pm, at the Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I Street, NW, Washington, DC. Tickets to the reception and award ceremony are $25 for general admission, $10 for students, and can be purchased via www.SplitThisRock.org until April 1, 2017. Light refreshments will be served and ASL interpretation will be provided. The event is co-sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington.

Francisco Aragón / Letras Latinas, the literary arts program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame
The depth and breadth of Aragón’s work to support Latinx poetry and poets is vital and enduring. Split This Rock is particularly excited by PINTURA: PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis, a multi-year initiative that encourages new Latino writing inspired by art, above all a Smithsonian American Art Museum traveling exhibit titled ‘Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.’ The project includes ekphrastic writing workshops; inviting writers to engage with the exhibit; and partnering with literary journals to publish portfolios of ekphrastic writing. Letras Latinas blog, with its insightful interviews with Latinx poets, all available for free, is an inestimable resource for poets. Aragón’s work leverages the university’s resources on behalf of a community of poets viewed as marginal by many publishers, critics, and scholars.

Andrea Assaf / Art2Action
Besides the power and energy of this organization, what struck Split This Rock was a conscious balance between using poetry to tell the stories of Iraq and Iraqis in the war and Arab-American experiences broadly, and the way Art2Action uses poetry as a medium of healing for Iraq war veterans. Producing multimedia and multi-genre performances like the spoken-word opera, Eleven Reflections on September, the organization offers audiences an opportunity to sit with the meanings of September 11, 2001 both in Arab-American communities and our shared history.

JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard / Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon
What strikes us about Howard’s projects is that Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon is not just a workshop, but a support system for a community of mostly queer women of color. Howard is a non-stop force for promoting poetry by queer women of color and poets who write it; for instance, in her guest editor role for the issue of Sinister Wisdom Journal, BLACK LESBIANS: WE ARE THE REVOLUTION!

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) / Undocupoets and Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color
Soto’s work to expand qualification for literary prizes to undocumented writers through #Undocupoets is vital. Calling the publishing industry to account by insisting on space for representation of and by undocumented people pushes our culture to expand its own borders. The journal Nepantla, Soto’s current major project, publishes queer poets of color and calls for dialogue on accountability, inclusion, and representation with its readership and poets.

Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social and personal change. It calls poets to the center of public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Its programs integrate poetry into public life and supports poets of all ages who write and perform this essential work. Split This Rock’s intent is that the Freedom Plow Award, like its signature biennial poetry festival, will become an essential, enduring part of its mission to promote the growing field of art and social activism on a national level.

The CrossCurrents Foundation promotes social, environmental, and economic justice, focusing where it believes private funding can make a strategic difference to public education campaigns about critical issues. Effective and socially relevant public art is part of its overall effort to increase civic participation.

High School Poets Compete in Grand Slam Finals for the 2017 World Champion DC Youth Slam Team!

Washington, DC -- Teen poets will compete to secure a position on the world champion DC Youth Slam Team on Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 7 pm at The Mead Center for American Theatre, home of Arena Stage, located at 1101 6th St, SW, Washington, DC. Tickets can be purchased online at www.splitthisrock.org for $15 in advance, $20 at the door, with $5 tickets available for youth ages 18 and under. In addition to two rounds of poetry performances by exceptional high school students, the Finals will also feature award-winning poet Shelby Birch.

Since the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, hundreds of young writers and performers from the DC metro area have been working to make it to this year’s Finals through Split This Rock after school poetry clubs in over 25 high schools and at monthly Split This Rock youth open mics. Split This Rock’s youth programs provide young people the space to build a culture and community of literacy, art, and social change. After months of practice, writing workshops, qualifying bouts, and inspiring performances in an impressive Semi-Finals competition at the National Portrait Gallery, the top ten student competitors advanced from Semi-Finals to compete for five slots on the 2017 DC Youth Slam Team at this year’s Grand Slam Finals. The DC Youth Slam Team is a program of Split This Rock’s youth programs, which provides a platform for youth, ages 13-19, write, perform, and celebrate poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. The DC Youth Slam Team will represent the District of Columbia at the international youth poetry competition Brave New Voices, which will be hosted this year in the Bay Area.

“I write because it gives me a voice for the first time,” says poet Aniyah Smith of Wakefield High School, who earned first place in Semi-Finals and will be competing in Finals. “As a black woman in this country I have spent so long being silenced and ignored that at times I forget my words matter. When I step on that stage I remember. It's like liberating all the words I have been made to think I am not allowed to say. Poetry has become an act of defiance against a nation that has rendered me voiceless. These words are my way of speaking up.”

For more information, please visit Split This Rock’s website at www.splitthisrock.org, or contact Joseph Green, Youth Programs Coordinator at 202.787.5279 or joseph@splitthisrock.org.

High School Poets Compete in GRAND SLAM FINALS for the 2016 World Champion DC Youth Slam Team!

Washington, DC -- Teen poets compete to represent the District on the world champion DC Youth Slam Team, a program of Split This Rock, Friday, March 18, 2016, 7 pm, at The Mead Center for Theatre, Home of Arena Stage, 1101 6th St, SW, Washington, DC. Tickets are $15 in advance at www.splitthisrock.org; $20 the day of the slam. In addition to two rounds of poetry performance by exceptional high school students, the Finals will also feature Individual World Poetry slam finalist and award-winning poet Rasheed Copeland.
On Saturday, March 18, 2016, a performance poetry competition will select the next team of teenage poets to represent the District at the international poetry competition Brave New Voices, held this year in Washington, DC. After months of practice, writing workshops, qualifying bouts, and inspiring performances in a grueling Semi-Finals competition at the National Portrait Gallery, the final eight student competitors have been selected for the 2016 GRAND SLAM FINALS. These students from all over the DC area have shown great talent, poise, and mastery of words in delivering their original poetry in the most moving and passionate manner.

Hundreds of young writers and performers from all around DC, Maryland, and Virginia have been working to make it to this year’s Finals, building a culture and community of literacy, art, and social change through after-school poetry clubs run by Split This Rock.

“Poetry is how I learned to love myself,” says 17-year-old poet Bobbi Johnson, of Bishop McNamara High School, who earned 1st place in Semi-Finals and will be competing in Finals. “If I looked out the window or to my peers and found no one who believed I mattered, I could look in my notebook and see it written. I mattered because I said so and the tangibility of ink and paper made it true for me. I have been writing myself into existence ever since. It’s how I cope with life.”

A program of Split This Rock, the DC Youth Slam Team uses spoken word poetry to teach and empower teens from the DC metropolitan area to speak up about issues of social justice. With free weekly writing workshops, monthly open mics, poetry slams, and annual travel to regional and national competitions, the team provides training and a platform for talented District youth to develop their poetry and public speaking skills with guidance from mentors and peers.

poem of the week

Talk Ugly

Typhoon Poem

by: Patrick Rosal

all the zillion spoons whacking
the rusty roofs, all the wicked tin streams
flipping full-grown bucks off their hooves.
Everywhere there used to be a river,
there’s a bigger river now. Every hard face
on the block is sopping...